Objects provide an interface to data stored in databases. Typically, objects in a database environment provide an interface to data stored in a database, so that the data may be viewed in a particular structure or association. Typically, objects may provide an interface to enable the data in a database to be viewed as associated attributes and values. For example, an attribute may correspond to an “employee name”, and its value may correspond to a string of characters “John Doe”.
While objects provide a valuable mechanism for interacting with databases, the construction of objects can become labor-intensive. Objects become complex as they are constructed and built upon. Difficulties arise when, for example, a database application requires use of an object to interface with data, where the object was created and used elsewhere to arrange the data in the database. In such scenarios, an object is constructed separately for use in a database application that interacts with the database.
One common approach provides for manually constructing the object for use with the database application resides. But manually constructing value objects for use with database systems is labor-intensive and error-prone. Often, hand-coded objects are constructed by retrieving data from the database, and reverse constructing the objects from the data. Furthermore, objects can become complex, having many dependent objects and attributes. As such, significant overhead is associated with manually constructing objects for use with database applications.